Chicago is facing another Second City moment: It soon will not be able to boast about having the tallest building in America.

After nearly four decades, that title is set to be reclaimed by New York in 2013 when the 1,776-foot One World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan usurps the 1,451-foot Willis Tower.

Chicago’s fate was sealed with the recent foreclosure lawsuit filed by the Anglo Irish Bank Corporation against Garrett Kelleher, an Irish developer. The suit all but spelled doom for Mr. Kelleher’s proposed 2,000-foot-high Chicago Spire condominium.

Nevertheless, experts assert that the city will remain vital to the production of superstructures, most of which are now being built outside the country. And despite the travails of the Spire, there continues to be guarded optimism in some local camps that Chicago would again build the country’s loftiest edifice.

“The community would embrace it, and there are very good construction trades here,” said William F. Baker, a partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the architectural firm based in Chicago.

Mr. Baker said that with the current state of technology, another super-tall tower could be erected in a relatively short time, perhaps just a couple of years. The challenge will be financing, as was the case with the Spire.

“Somebody will build on the Spire site, whether it will be 2,000 or 1,200, or 1,700 or 800,” said Robert Wislow, chief executive of U.S. Equities Realty, the commercial real estate firm that manages Willis Tower. “I think somebody will build a very tall building on that site.”

The site, just west of Lake Shore Drive and alongside the Chicago River, is currently a gaping hole. There was no response to numerous messages left with Mr. Kelleher’s firm, Shelbourne Development.

For now, said Lynn Osmond, president of the Chicago Architecture Foundation, the city’s relevance in the skyscraper trade will be in a supporting role to projects elsewhere. “Where we’re hanging our hat on,” Ms. Osmond said, “is that our guys are still building the tallest buildings in the world.”

The city’s transition from skyscraper custodian to technology exporter made for an interesting juxtaposition last week at the annual award dinner of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, which is based in Chicago. Among the buildings the group recognized this year was the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, currently the world’s tallest at 2,717 feet. That skyscraper was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which has had its hand in three of the world’s five tallest.

“Chicago still sees itself as home of tall buildings and not because we are building the world’s tallest, ” said Antony Wood, executive director of the council, “but because of the expertise that resides in this city.”

In the end, the council gave top honors to Broadcasting Place, a 23-story university housing facility in Leeds, England, signaling that in its eyes, at least, biggest is not necessarily best.

Chicago relinquished the global superlative in 1997, when what was then known as the Sears Tower — renamed last year for the London insurance company Willis — ceded it to the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. While the tip of the 88-story Petronas project tops out at 32 feet taller, much of its upper reaches are not occupiable. The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, which operates as the chief arbiter of building-height rankings, includes the spire in its official measurements but not working antennas like those on Willis.

Similarly, there appears to be some debate over whether One World Trade Center will be the rightful claimant to the American title, as its roof is to be 83 feet shorter than Willis Tower’s.

By the council’s designations, Willis Tower is currently the world’s eighth-tallest building, while the 1,389-foot Trump International Hotel and Tower across the Loop, is 10th.

Experts agree that it is unlikely that the United States can compete with Asian countries for the global title.

“The American market doesn’t support it,” Mr. Wood said, “not because of the economic depression, but because of the maturity of the market.”

Ms. Osmond said Chicago’s future hope at besting Manhattan might be clearer after the mayoral election in February, noting Mayor Richard M. Daley’s support for superstructures and his personal involvement in the plans for both the Trump building and the Spire.

The Trump building was at one point designed to be 2,000 feet, but it was scaled down for economic and safety reasons after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Andrew Weiss, executive vice president of The Trump Organization, said he thought the distinction of tallest building in the United States had lost a lot of its cachet. “I think it still has some meaning,” Mr. Weiss said, “but it is not as important as it was 30 years ago.”

John Huston, executive vice president of Landmark Properties, a part owner of Willis Tower, said the office complex would continue to have the highest occupied floor and roof even after One World Trade Center was complete.

A version of this article appears in print on October 29, 2010, on page A21B of the National edition with the headline: City’s Skyscraper Title Is Going, Going ... Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe